Danehy

Tom takes the week off this week to
give a gubernatorial candidate the floor

I hate Barack Obama and I'm running for Governor of Arizona because I hate Barack Obama and because I want to be Governor of Arizona so that I can sit in a better office from which to hate Barack Obama.

A little bio here: My ancestors came from the good (mandatory sunscreen) part of Europe. The correct pronunciation of my last name is Douche-ie, but the Young Republican volunteers from my former frat house at ASU tell me that there is some sort of negative connotation that goes along with that, so we have the name rhyme with "juicy," as in any scandals involving the Obama Administration, or "loosey-goosey," as in my business practices. More on that later.

I was born in Toledo, Ohio, but I came to Arizona after I read a list of the greatest party schools in America; plus, ASU offers some business classes. Oh, and I misspoke earlier. I'm not a "former" member of a frat house. I'm still a member of Pi Kappa Alpha, a house I guarantee Barack Obama couldn't have gotten into. When you're in a fraternity, you're a member for life, unless the house gets kicked off campus and/or disbanded because some underage guy dies from a drinking contest or the house exceeds some arbitrary number of date-rape allegations.

I am currently the State Treasurer of Arizona. My crowning achievement is that I killed a tax that would have benefited public-school teachers. In order to maintain my position as a Republican in good standing in Arizona, I can honestly state that no one hates public-school teachers more than I do. I may be dead even with a few people, but when it comes to public-school teachers, no one is going to out-hate me.

I recently picked up the endorsement of Cap'n Al Melvin, who dropped out of the Governor's race because he couldn't hang with me, donation-wise. Senator Melvin was on the front lines during the recent legislative assault on public-school teachers. I'll call on him if I need a teacher-hate booster shot.

My fiscal idol is Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas. When he became governor of that state, he slashed taxes all over the place, just as I am promising to do. (He and I both share the dream of eliminating our states' income taxes altogether.) Sure, his state's economy is deeply in the toilet right now, but I contend it's because he didn't cut taxes enough. They taught us in Republican School that we're always supposed to mention John F. Kennedy, who cut taxes for the rich and then saw the economy take off. Of course, the top tax rate at the time was 93 percent, a holdover from the recovery from World War II and Kennedy only did it so that his richer-than-God daddy could keep on paying for all of the family's mistresses, but the economy did tick upward. So, if some tax cuts are good, more should be better.

I have several overpriced political consultants (somebody told me that such a phrase is a redundancy, but I went to ASU so I'm not quite sure what that means). They all tell me that running against Obama is a sure-fire winning strategy in 2014. Try to mention Obama as much as you can.

I heard a story once about some Broadway actors who had been doing a particular play for quite some time and they were bored. They decided that whoever could sneak the word "banana" into the play that night would be treated to dinner by the other cast members. There's a chance that long-time Broadway actress Elaine Stritch, who died last week, might have played that game while performing on the Great White Way. (See what I did there? It never hurts to sneak in "white" whenever you get a chance. I'm not a bigot, but maybe some of my voters are.) Elaine Stritch was 89 when she died, but I've instructed my staff to try to find a way we can tie her death to Obamacare.

Why, it's such a good strategy that Tom Forese and Doug Little, who are running as a tandem for the Arizona Corporation Commission, are using it. Yes, they're running for spots on a board that sets utility rates in the state and they're doing so with an anti-Obama pitch. It's brilliant. They even have a no-Obama symbol in their ads.

These political consultants are telling Republicans that same thing, over and over, in just about every state and they get paid every time. Now, that's a business model.

Speaking of business models, I'm sure that my opponents are going to try to bring up the fact that I got stupid-rich selling Cold Stone Creamery franchises, many of which went bankrupt. Well, we can't all succeed; that would be like Communism.

In fact, I was so busy counting my money that I forgot to pay taxes on my house for a few years until they placed a lien on it. So you see, I've been Up and I've been to that spot that's just below Up, so you should vote for me for Governor.

And don't believe what those people write about my finances and business dealings in the newspapers. You know that those people probably all secretly voted for Barack Obama.